


we sigh love, we cry foul

by autoluminescence



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-18 22:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoluminescence/pseuds/autoluminescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can't be The New Rachel. She doesn't think she can be The New Tina, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we sigh love, we cry foul

Seeing Santana again is … bizarre, to say the least.

Tina knew that she’d been in and out of Lima almost constantly before National Breakup Day 2012, but they’d never crossed paths, and they had never been close enough to keep in touch on their own.

Santana wasn’t supposed to be really real, anymore; she had faded into a puddle of loosely held-together lines and expressions in Tina’s mind. She had left an imprint on McKinley of The Santana, like Mercedes left an outline of The Mercedes and Rachel a shining, hollow statue of The Rachel, and all of the clubbers were just trying to slip and slide into the spots left behind.

People grow up. The roles stay the same.

That pint-sized spot with the echo of the giant voice should have been hers. Rachel promised – that a little patience in the spring would mean her own gold star come autumn, that she’d get (the boyfriend, the power, the voice) it.

Three strikes there.

She’s not even surprised that Marley and Blaine got there first. Second- (or, more frequently, third-)best isn’t new.

(And the one person who – almost – always made her feel first is leaving for Chicago at 8 am tomorrow. So. There’s that.)

Being denied The Rachel wasn’t the end of the world, though; Tina had just needed a new game plan. Her identity had always been perfectly malleable, slipping into thick black eyeliner or a prep-school dress; The Rachel was gone, but there were still plenty of shoes in the closet left to fill.

She doesn’t have the power or the voice for The Mercedes or the ability to inspire change for The Kurt or the remotest desire to become The Puck, even if Jake hadn’t stepped in through genetic first-picks. She briefly considers The Quinn, but, weirdly enough, Quinn’s still too real – through their Skype sessions and plans to visit over Thanksgiving – to replace.

That leaves The Santana.

It’s an incredibly easy mask to slip on. It’s just a few catty remarks – even if they never come out quite as quippy as Santana-the-first’s – and leaping up in rage and indignation when the situation requires it.

It’s just, still, not right at all. Later, she realizes it’s mostly because she’s missing real Santana’s fear-powered bitch factor. It was Santana’s superpower – magnifying the metric tons of her own terror and reflecting it back into the faces of her victims.

Ironically, Tina 1.0, scared of her own shadow, would have been better suited for this role if she had managed to string enough words together to get her verbal slayage on. She’s not scared anymore, though.

To hurt her, they’d have to notice her first.

But none of it matters because suddenly Santana – the real one, not the outline – is _here_ , and playing _Tina’s part_ , and she is actually going to strangle Finn Hudson with a Pink Ladies jacket and no one will find his body.

She can’t be a stuttering goth and she can’t be that-girl-Mike’s-dating and and she can’t be a vampire and she can’t be Rachel and she can’t be Santana, and she has no earthly idea who Tina is.

Tonight, she’ll be Jan. And, just maybe, tomorrow’s Tina 5.0 might be an arsonist with a propensity for high school destruction.


End file.
